YMMV / O.J.: Made in America

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Remember in The People v. O. J. Simpson when O.J.'s defense team redecorated O.J.'s house to better reflect African American culture for the visiting and predominantly black jury? Yeah, that really happened.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Mark Fuhrman casually and with certainty insists that Rodney King's beating wouldn't have been necessary if the police had been allowed to subdue him with a chokehold. Cut to the death of George Floyd in 2020, when mass protests erupted throughout the United States after an African American suspect died after police tried to subdue him by kneeling on his neck with their full weight. The fact that Fuhrman was also guilty of racial slurs doesn't help either.
• Jerkass Woobie: How much pity or sympathy you can feel for Mike Gilbert who was by OJ's side throughout the trial and always believed he was guilty is hard to say. That he had a Heel Realization and is open about how awful he was makes him somewhat sympathetic.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The crime scene photographs are ghastly. The most graphic of these photos is Nicole Brown Simpson's body with her throat slashed open to the point she was nearly decapitated. Some networks that air the documentary have a black bar over the wound because of how violent it is.
  • The reveal that O.J. stalked and watched Nicole having sex with other men.
  • Any and all scenes/photos of police brutality and racially-motivated violence certainly qualify, particularly an image of a deceased man who was lynched.
• Values Dissonance: It is very disconcerting to hear one of the older jurors on the case stating that she has no respect for any woman that stays by a man who is abusive, at least by today's standards. On that point, a modern audience watching the documentary will see the prosecution's attempts to portray O.J. as a domestic abuser with pictures and audiotapes for evidence only to have the jury not care as a somewhat uncomfortable reminder of only how recently domestic abuse has been taken seriously.
• The Woobie:
  • It's hard to not feel some level of pity towards Christopher Darden throughout the trial, particularly in the post-trial press conference when he completely breaks down in tears mid-sentence and leaves the podium. Lawyer Jeffrey Toobin states that he believes his infamous decision to have O.J. try on the glove came from a feeling of having been "pushed around in this courtroom enough" and "made to feel small". Verges into Tear Jerker, but one of the two major people from the case (the other being Judge Lance Ito) that really wants nothing to do with it and is conspicuously absent from interviews during this series? Darden.
  • Poor Hertz CEO Frank Olson is all but crying in all his interviews as he sadly recounts how he made OJ their corporate spokesman and how he considered him a friend for years. Edelman revealed in interviews that Olson's wife convinced him to speak for the documentary as a way to deal with his guilt.

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